paul wheaton

some stuff i just now added to the first post

paul wheaton wrote:
Solutions for people

Some people buy land and do this, only to hate it and take a big loss. The bootcamp eliminates the financial burdens while giving people a chance to try it out.  And we hope that this way has less chance of hating it.

Some people ache to get into homesteading, but cannot afford the land to even try.  Not only does this give you a taste, but there are paths to land.

Some people make the leap into this stuff and discover they thought they would be a superstar at this, but end up just not putting in the hours.  The 40 hours per week of the bootcamp, side-by-side with like minded folks helps to develop good, industrious habits.

Some people are plenty industrious and have good, industrious habits, but they are sick of doing this alone.  

Some people desperately crave wholesome substance and a bit of time outdoors.

Some people feel they are currently living a gray life, with a gray job, eating gray food.  They live in the brown cloud of the city, eating from foods they know are loaded with toxins, and they know the water from the tap contains chlorine, floride and a buffet of other things.  Their world seems to have a new flavor of sleaze every day.  The bootcamp gets you out of all of that.

Some people are about to graduate high school and do NOT want to take on the massive debt of college.  Nor do they want to enter the bottom rung of the work force.  The bootcamp will be an excellent fit after high school.

Some people ache for community and we have that.


Some people have tried community living and were frustrated:

... by a community that accomplishes very little.  A group of people chipping away at things 40 hours a week adds up to getting a lot done.  

... that too many other people consumed but didn't contribute.  The bootcamp has a solid 40 hours per week from everybody.

... by 12 hours a week of decision making meetings that were mostly drama.  Our replacement for that takes about ten minutes per week.



A new recipe for building community

We changed our policies a while ago.  The only people allowed to do our ant village program or our deep roots program must spend a minimum of six months on the bootcamp first.  

seem okay?

click here to see the official bootcamp web page!
Most of the information is on that page.  This thread is mostly for discussion.

Let's make sure you are in the right place:

permaculture bootcamp: 40 hours a week elbow-to-elbow with others seeking the same thing. Get a warm bunk and organic food with your gardening and natural building experiences. All of your effort is to benefit yourself and future boots.  Kinda school-ish. If this is what you are looking for, you found the right web page!

the sepper program:  Rent a humble cabin for a few days or weeks.  Participate in the bootcamp as much or as little as you like.  Maybe you come as a couple and one person works online while the other is in the bootcamp.  For more information click here.


2024 PTJ Postcard - a taste of what goes on at Wheaton Labs:




A recent bootcamp project:




A recent winter bootcamp project:




Solutions for people

Some people buy land and do this, only to hate it and take a big loss. The bootcamp eliminates the financial burdens while giving people a chance to try it out.  And we hope that this way has less chance of hating it.

Some people ache to get into homesteading, but cannot afford the land to even try.  Not only does this give you a taste, but there are paths to land.

Some people make the leap into this stuff and discover they thought they would be a superstar at this, but end up just not putting in the hours.  The 40 hours per week of the bootcamp, side-by-side with like minded folks helps to develop good, industrious habits.

Some people are plenty industrious and have good, industrious habits, but they are sick of doing this alone.  

Some people desperately crave wholesome substance and a bit of time outdoors.

Some people feel they are currently living a gray life, with a gray job, eating gray food.  They live in the brown cloud of the city, eating from foods they know are loaded with toxins, and they know the water from the tap contains chlorine, floride and a buffet of other things.  Their world seems to have a new flavor of sleaze every day.  The bootcamp gets you out of all of that.

Some people are about to graduate high school and do NOT want to take on the massive debt of college.  Nor do they want to enter the bottom rung of the work force.  The bootcamp will be an excellent fit after high school.

Some people ache for community and we have that.


Some people have tried community living and were frustrated:

... by a community that accomplishes very little.  A group of people chipping away at things 40 hours a week adds up to getting a lot done.  

... that too many other people consumed but didn't contribute.  The bootcamp has a solid 40 hours per week from everybody.

... by 12 hours a week of decision making meetings that were mostly drama.  Our replacement for that takes about ten minutes per week.



A new recipe for building community

We changed our policies a while ago.  The only people allowed to do our ant village program or our deep roots program must spend a minimum of six months on the bootcamp first.  



overview

We have 220 acres.  We spend our days gardening and building stuff to our standards. In the winter we heat our buildings with rocket mass heaters (we have more than a dozen).  We are the host for the annual "Permaculture Technology Jamboree" - and in a way, the bootcamp build those same things all year.  We even get quite a few experts stopping by from time-to-time.

We have a different way we do things.  Our gardens feature a lot of hugelkultur. The homes we build are made of logs and mud.  Zero cement, paint or glue.

People come to hang out in the bootcamp for a week or two to immerse themselves in this form of living.  Some come for months.  Some come for years.  

95% of the work done is to benefit the current boots or the future boots. Growing gardens to produce the food of the bootcamp. Building habitat for the bootcamp.  Caring for tools that are used by the bootcamp.  Etc.



a little jingle in your pocket

COIN-1: Several boots have harvested hundreds of dollars by posting pics and videos of theirs experiences here in the BEL program (most recent payout was 5 digits).

COIN-2: You can shoot videos for Paul's YouTube channel. Details here.

COIN-3: After a few weeks (once we think you can do stuff on your own), talk to us about some bounties for coin.  There are several little projects we are willing to pay for.   A person could earn a few hundred bucks per month on evenings and weekends.

COIN-4: And if there is a special tool or bit of warm clothes you would like to have, the boots love program has proven to be quite generous.

COIN-5: When people need a ride to and from the airport a person with a rig could harvest pick-up and drop-off bounties.  (Normally $20 one way during normal hours and $50 for crazy hours)

COIN-6: When a boot is here long enough, they can harvest some coin giving tours.

COIN-7: Grow your own weekend garden and sell your produce for events.

COIN-8: Some ants and deep roots people have paid for help with their plots - building and gardening.

COIN-9: We have a neighbor that sometimes needs some construction help and has paid for that on evenings and weekends.

COIN-10: Some residents in the past have set up patreon accounts and made a few hundred bucks a month posting videos and pics.  

COIN-11: When you have a plot to play with, you can build a fence and some gardens and a structure.   And then you can sell those improvements to somebody else.  

COIN-12: Grow a 200 square foot garden and harvest the fat payout for the 2025 GAMCOD project.




the tie-in to the PEP program

The estimates are that a person participating in the bootcamp might get PEP1 certified in about 10 to 12 weeks.   We're thinking half of the BBs would be harvested during project labor and the other half would be on evenings and weekends.   More about the PEP program here.



An interview with people that had been in the bootcamp program, about the bootcamp program



audio only.  


Bits and bobs that might be of interest to new boots:

A summary of all things Wheaton Labs
Bootcamp Experience log
the Wheaton Labs forum





click here for the complete FAQ


Here you can get an idea of 65 different things that the boots have created in about 9 minutes



..

We used to take crypto in an automated way, but that broke.  Which crypto do you have in mind?

The next start dates are:

   december 7
   march 1

And then we are switching to the first sunday of the month after that.  

J. Syme wrote:wow 11mil + visits, the server upgrade was just in time, does it need any expansion? I'd be willing to invest $$ if it helps spread the permie word.

The server is doing much better.  

Stuff that is killing me now where I could use funds:

  - bad guys have pooped on our mailing list, and we are developing new tools to clean up and prevent future issues
        (about three months into it and the costs are killing me, notice how the kickstarter is doing so poorly)

  - our server bill has tripled.  This month is quadruple.  Combined with above - ouchy!

Spreading the permie word ...  i think about this a hundred times a day every day!  How do we infect more brains?  If $100K dropped in my lap today with a label "to spread the permie word" ...    I am not sure how I would spend it.  Two years ago I would have said "Pump the bootcamp and ringer program.  Make heaps of content for kickstarters.  Kickstarters then pour funds into the bootcamp and ringer program.  Repeat."  Instead, the kickstarter stuff seems to have dried up.  Maybe if we repair our email stuff the kickstarter stuff will come back ...      

...  buying advertising ...  my impression is that 99% of advertisers don't get their money back.  

...  andres has an idea to make a netflix quality movie - but again, it would require a lot of advance coin.  

My brain has been down this road a thousand times.  Over and over I come to the same conclusion:   boost the bootcamp (BEL) and ringer program; create a hundred more artifacts (wofati movie/book; roundwood book; hugelkultur book; food pump book ...) and one of these artifacts will go viral and take everything else with it.

A new monthly record!


      11,684,533 visits!

Was it the book 1984 that was reworking the language to make it "better"?

Will the people of france be required to speak only english - so that english speaking folks can understand them?

The two letter abbreviations are klunky even for people in the us.  At the same time, people one or two states over probably recognize it.  So if you say "MT" regional folks know, and people far away don't.

Somebody could say they are in España.  Most americans have no idea where that is.  Even if that same person says "spain" they now think it is somewhere in europe.  

I think we need to allow for some klunky in all the languages.  

November 30.  Macadamia nuts and almond Roca.

I mention this annual ritual in a podcast, complaining that I cannot find organic almond Roca. She sent me organic, home made almond Roca the next year.  Very nice!  

I told the guys a few stories about grandad while munching on almond Roca and organic Macadamia nuts.

UPDATE!  CLEARANCE!  Three DVD copies of the same thing will be sent.  So you might give them to people over the holidays or something.




If a person was going to get just one DVD, this would be the one. A cob style rocket mass heater is "the old reliable". We have two projects to demonstrate this technique. One in a log home and one in a tipi. We put one in a tipi as part of an experiment to test how warm a person can be with a rocket mass heater and zero insulation. We interview the couple that stayed in the tipi for the first winter, with a strong focus on how comfortable they were when it was 26 degrees below zero.

This DVD is available here as a standalone. We tried to make it dual purpose, something that could fit within the new 4-DVD set, and something that could also fit for people that want just one video.

HD instant view	$10	$25	$25	$30
tiny (SD) download	$15	$40	$40	$45
physical DVDs (US shipping)	$20	$45	$45	$35
physical DVDs (non-US shipping)	$45	$70	$70	$100

Norman Maclean: "The world is full of bastards, the number increasing rapidly the further one gets from Missoula, Montana."

John Steinbeck: "I am in love with Montana. For other states I have admiration, respect, recognition, even some affection, but with Montana it is love, and it's difficult to analyze love when you're in it."





I just finished reading "Sun House" where the most ultimate place in the world to be is near missoula, montana.

I grant you that it is confusing.  

And it is confusing that there are so many creeks that have the exact same name.  Just in montana there are many unique creeks named "trout creek".



It's a bit like the debate about the metric system.  Currently, in the US we use both.  (the other one is called "Imperial").  Frankly, I far prefer miles/feet/inches ...  and I so prefer Fahrenheit that it takes me time to think of rough conversions.  People argue that it is too hard to do the conversion math.  My response is that I pretty much never convert miles to feet, so I don't care.

For non-US persons:  how do you feel about a metric clock?  Would you be better off?  Would you lose some of your culture?  I'm pretty sure that having a metric calendar will never happen, but it just feels like our calendars are on the chopping block.


Non-US peeps feel it is ridiculous that we don't switch to how they measure stuff.  I kinda like it that we seem a bit ridiculous to those folks.  


I live in montana.  I usually prefer to write out "montana" rather than "mt".  Usually.  I love the name "montana".  I like the idea that people know I live in montana.  If I am reading a book or watching a movie and they pine for montana, I have a strong "fuckin-A!" feeling.  Montana is great.





To the whole thing with the two letter abbreviations.  

If somebody says "BC" I think they mean british columbia.  If they say "vancouver" I am thinking of the canadian city, or island, or maybe the town just north of portland, oregon.  

Portland could be in oregon or maine.  

WA is washington state and DC is nation's capitol.

No matter how much you try to convert us to metric (or being exact in our location) we will resist!  


I take it that somebody asked a question ...    maybe they said "will sunchokes be awesome in AL?"  ...  and, rather than requiring that person to convert to metric, I think this is an invitation to activate the art of communication.  "Is AL a friend of yours?  Or is one of those "in a box with a fox" riddles?"


You seek efficiency.  Which is admirable.  I seek efficiency too.  I also want art and culture.  And sometimes those two conflict with each other.  At those times, i make the best of it.